| Great Wits To Madness Near Allied |
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| written by RJones3 |
September 5, 2008 - 3:38 PM PDT |
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0 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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| It is hard to know who was crazier, the would-be conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre or the director Werner Hertzog, who brought this historical dead end to the screen. Doubtless the former, since Hertzog won critical acclaim. Almost nothing is known about Aguirre. The few available documents suggest full-blown lunacy and early demise. A little lunacy, however, can only help the modern cinematic artist. In the absence of consistent critical standards, his/her fixed ideas have staying power, like a recurrent nightmare. Whatever you may think of this movie, you are not likely to forget it, and that makes it more or less memorable. A single tableau from the movie will suffice to make my point. To the left of the screen we have the chiseled Nordic features of Aguirre, sporting a suit of armor against the rigors of the jungle. He is played by Klaus Kinski, who was kept on the set only by threat of violence and whose remuneration ate up a third of the movie's budget. To the right of the screen is an Inca slave in native costume. He is played by a retarded street beggar that Herzog picked up in Cuzco. While Kinski strikes a heroic pose, the beggar struggles to play a lively tune on a set of wooden pipes. Does the pathos of the scene belong to the historic event, or to the movie that depicts it? |
| apocalypse then |
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| written by rarcher |
February 12, 2006 - 11:08 AM PST |
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0 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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i enjoyed the movie even though it did go really really really slow
i couldn't help wondering while watching this if copolla watched it before/while making apocalypse now
in some ways very similar |
| Heavy Handed Herzog |
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| written by qirkyflix |
April 1, 2004 - 12:27 PM PST |
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8 out of 13 members found this review helpful
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| I'm a long time admirer of the work of Werner Herzog, so when I joined Greencine immediately started renting his films. Sadly, Aguirre just doesn't do it for me any more. When I saw it 15-20 years ago I thought it was magnificent and thought provoking and "meaningful". Now that I've seen a few more films, and helped shoot a few, this film seems much more heavy handed, slow-moving and ponderous than I recall. It's still an interesting film, and you have to admire the stamina and sheer lunacy that drove the actual shooting schedule. But the editing is much too leisurely and even for a fan it felt like a chore sitting through its mere 94 minutes. |
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